United States Senator Cary Estes Kefauver sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1952 and 1956 and was the vice-presidential running mate of Adlai Stevenson in 1956. He entered 16 presidential primaries in 1952 and won 14 of them but was denied the nomination at the convention.
“Keef” graduated from the university in 1924 and from Yale University’s Law School in 1927. At UT he was president of the All Students’ Club, the 1923 junior class, and the Southern Confederation of College Students. He was the first president of the Blue Pencil literary club, and was tapped by the Scarabbean honor society. He edited the Orange and White in his senior year. He played tackle on the Volunteer football team and was Second Team All-Southern in 1923. He was also a champion in the discus and shot put and captain of the track team. He was a member of the Pan-Hellenic Council, performance manager of the annual Carnival, and a member of the YMCA Cabinet. He won the sophomore medal given by the Scarabbeans to the best all-round man in the sophomore class. He was a member of Alpha Phi Epsilon honorary journalism fraternity and of Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
He was appointed Tennessee’s finance director by Governor Prentice Cooper, agreeing to serve only a few months. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1939 and served until he took office in the Senate, to which he was elected in 1948.
In the 1948 senatorial campaign, Kefauver’s revolt against Memphis political boss E. H. Crump, whose forces had controlled Tennessee politics for decades, resulted in advertisements placed statewide by the Crump machine portraying Kefauver as a furtive, raccoon-like instrument of the communists. Kefauver turned the ads to his advantage. During a speech in Memphis, Kefauver put on a raccoon-skin cap and announced that he might “be a pet coon” but that he was not “Boss Crump’s pet coon.” Kefauver won the senatorial seat, and the coonskin cap became his trademark.
A staunch supporter of human rights, he gained a reputation as a crime buster while serving as chair of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. He voted for the GI Bill of Rights and sponsored the 24th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished the poll tax in federal elections. His exhaustive investigation of the pharmaceutical industry led to the Kefauver-Harris Drug Control Act of 1962. He died after suffering a heart attack on the floor of the Senate in 1963. His papers are preserved at the university, which also holds a full-size re-creation of his senatorial office.